Growing up a nerd in hiding - 5 things I learned
Growing up a nerd in hiding - Five things I learned
My name is Georgia and I am a nerd. I read neuroscience books for fun, am obsessed with online learning course, play baroque recorder and sleep with a soft toy Gorilla named Boba - after Boba Fett.
When my podcast Laugh Factory Nerd World came out this May (May the 4th of course ;)) I got messages from high school friends, family member and a few exes all asking the same thing “You are a nerd??” Yes friends, yes family - I may not have the glasses, or the suspenders but I am a nerd and it has taken until this past year, when we were all forced to do some serious going inside while inside, for me to own it proudly. I have spent years trying to hang with the cool kids and I’m exhausted - being cool is hard work…and pretending to be someone you aren’t is even harder.
Like all kids - young or old - I chose to hide my true self when my body got the message I wasn’t safe being me. I can trace it back to the end of sixth grade. Up until then I had no buzzes what so ever about dressing up as William Shakespeare to deliver my class project - silver foil shoe buckles and all; or spending lunchtimes creating Logo Writer vocabulary generation code with my boyfriend - who by the way was captain of the basketball and football team, 6ft tall, handsome and also a total nerd! But when I decided to stage a performance of Red and Black from Les Miserables for our final school assembly things changed fast. I have always been a musical theatre nerd and back then I was OBSESSED with Les Miserables. I had got my hands on a copy of the entire score over spring break and when we came back I had copies printed and highlighted, staging planned and had cast my master piece from my friends in the school choir.
My best friend Steve - who incidentally went on to win an Olympic gold medal - was aptly cast as Marius, and I was to be Enjorlas, Leader of the Revolution- of course. Looking back now I am not sure my friends were that excited about the whole thing and maybe felt a little self conscious working our choreography every lunch time on the the top oval amongst the footy and soccer games, but they persevered because of my passion and determination to leave our modern operatic legacy.
A few of the other sixth grade girls in choir - who were always acting too cool for me - got wind of this production (admittedly it wasn’t a stealth mission) and decided it sabotage it, kind of like Javert at the barricades. They started watching our rehearsals and teasing me for being a nerd and a baby who sang stupid songs! Steve and my other friends told me not to care and said they were just jealous. I tired. But then they started the I HATE GEORGIA CLUB and one girl left a note with a horrid drawing on it threatening to light a tampon on fire and stick it up my bum. This might have felt like an empty threat except for my knowledge that she had been suspended earlier that year for hitting a boy over the head with a cricket bat. Once again, Steve and my friends tried to help and said they would start the I LOVE GEORGIA CLUB but the damage was done. I called off the production - much to everyone else’s relief most likely. I put away the score of Les Mis and sat through the final school assembly as Christy (one of the girls in the I Hate Georgia Club) sang Mariah Carey’s Hero receiving thunderous applause from a packed school hall.
Message received world - cool is cool, loving the things I love is not and if you want to survive you better learn how to like songs in the top 40 countdown.
Spending my life trying to keep the real me quiet has brought with it many lessons; lessons I wish someone could have told me then; lessons that have made me into the musical theater loving, opera singing, brain science studying nerdburger that I am so so very proud to be today and below are a few i’d like to share with you in the hope that it might help you come out from what ever shell you might be hiding the true you under.
1. Nerds make the best partners!
Ok so let’s cut right to the things that really matter right? Dating. I’ve dated the jocks, the fancy business leaders even the celebrities and I can tell you without a doubt the best relationships of my life have been with nerds. Nerds are passionate and excited about the most wonderful things and would rather spend their time doing those things than being out at bars or clubs meting other potential mates (yes I called them ‘potential mates’.) Nerds are not used to “getting the girl” so once they have you they will value you, adore you and not take you for granted. Nerds don’t expect you to look and behave perfectly all the time because - in the words of one of my fav stand ups Adam Hills - “we are just happy you want to have sex with us and have a favorite episode of the Simpsons.”
2. It is your nerdiness or difference that will make you a success
I tried for years to fit into the Hollywood mold - the right hair, clothes, resting bitch face. I couldn’t do it! My face wants to smile, I hate showing my midriff; I lost all of my hair from Alopecia in 2007 and that is when things took off for me. It was literally losing part of my false identity that allowed me to live into my purpose of spreading positive messages for kids. What’s more, it was being overly bubbly, bouncy and happy that landed me my two biggest voice over roles in A list video games - what up my gaming Nerds!?! Embrace your difference, capitalize on what makes you ‘weird’ I promise it is what the world wants!!
3. When people say things will change - believe them!!
It’s not easy to hear advice when you are in the middle of the yucky specially when you are working sooo hard and nothing seems to be changing. For years I felt like I would always be hiding, that I would always be misunderstood and that I would never be able to allow myself to be me. I saw ‘getting older’ as a slope downwards where things would just get worse and I was so afraid that all that I dreamed of for my life and for the lives of those I wanted to help was disappearing. Turns out that slope was curved up. I was doing the work, healing my hurt, unlearning the lessons i’d taught myself for protection. Slowly but surely the real me was sticking its head out, checking its surroundings and now I have no intention of ever going back Things do change - if you do the work. Things do get better if you keep betting on yourself. And I promise you, you are worth betting on!!
4. Life is too long and too short.
When I look back on all the years that I spent with people who I didn’t really want to spend time with, who didn’t like the things I liked, who talked about shopping, and gossip and their jets… What a waste!! I could have been getting down with my buddies debating Mozart vs Bach or hitting baseballs at Castle Park while riffing on the firing and rewiring of neural pathways - urgh!! We have too many hours and weeks and years in our lives to spend it with the people that aren’t our people!! What’s more life is too short to spend time trying to make those folks into our people! If someone doesn’t get you for you - all of you - please, my love, move on! If you were to live for 100 years and meet a new person ever minute of your life - without sleeping you would only ever meet 52, 560,000 people in your lifetime - that leaves over 7.6 billion people for you to meet who might get your jokes!!! Life is too short move on!!
5. Most people are hiding something about themselves.
As I have grown to embrace and talk proudly about the whole me - nerd bits and all- it has become very clear to me that pretty much everyone is hiding a part of themselves which they were told was not ‘ok’. Their message may not have come in the form of frightening feminine hygiene product threat but we all get these messages at one point and we make ourselves smaller, less than and build a deep shame around that part of us. I think it is time for a shame revolution. Too many of us are carrying shame that doesn’t belong to use. Too many of us are still holding onto a belief that we won’t be loved if we show the whole of us to the world. And if soo many of us are living like this then perhaps it is this shame and fear the could be our greatest connector; our biggest moment of empathy yet as a human species and could be the thing that sets us all free from our past.
Will you join me?? This Leader of the revolution is ready in the wings with her flag held high! I still remember my lines…Do you hear the people sign?? When the beating of your heart, Echoes the beating of the drums, There is a life about to start, When tomorrow comes!
Twitter and insta: @georgiavanc
Fb /georgiavancuylenburg
